AREVALO MARTINEZ, RAFAEL

born July 25, 1884, Quezaltenango, Guatemala died June 13, 1975, Guatemala City Guatemalan novelist and short-story writer whose work is considered one of the most important precursors of modern Latin-American fiction. Arvalo Martnez was appointed director of the Guatemalan National Library in 1926, a post he held until 1946. A short-story writer of marked ability, he introduced a new form known as the psychozoological tale, the most famous of which, El hombre que pareca un caballo (1915; The Man Who Looked Like a Horse), deals with the conflict between spiritual and animal natures. As a novelist, Arvalo Martnez attempted to explore social problems and problems of the human personality without resorting to realism. He became one of the foremost writers of what has been called magical realism, a form that eventually led to the novel of the absurd. His best-known novels are La oficina de paz en Orolandia (1925; The Office of Peace in Orolandia), El mundo de los Maharachas (1938; The World of the Maharachias), and Viaje a Ipanda (1939; Voyage to Ipanda). Hondura (1946) is an autobiographical novel.